Where Lilacs Still Bloom (14 page)

C
ornelia Givens raised her hand to tap on her editor’s door. She checked her attire. She wore a white blouse and gray linen skirt with a whisper of a raised hemline that came to the tops of her high-button shoes. A dark belt emphasized her small waist. When she patted her hair, she felt the pencil sticking out from the bun at the top of her head. She pulled it out, held it in her hand with the card. A watch hung from a gold necklace, stopping modestly well above her breasts. It was her professional dress, and it rarely varied in the two years she’d worked for the
Sacramento Bee
as a columnist with her own byline. She held a plate of cookies. She took a deep breath and knocked.

“Come in,” CK said.

She handed him the plate, and he sighed as he picked up the maple sugar cookie. “What can I do for you that is in any way repayment for these priceless gems?”

“I’ve received yet another question for the Common Woman column about flowers and plants and gardening in general. I know nothing about these things, especially flowers.” Cornelia tapped the pencil on her card. “I feel I deprive our readers by choosing to ignore these kinds of concerns about the mold on leaves or bugs that eat their rosebushes for lunch. I answer baby questions and indulge myself with recipes I personally love. I get requests for more, but I’m failing the gardeners out there.”

“Go on.” His eyes gave her their full attention, something she’d seen whenever anyone addressed him. She always felt listened to.

“I want to make an excursion to improve my understanding of all things horticultural,” Cornelia said.

“The library is free,” he said, and he grinned.

Cornelia had studied books about horticulture and botany and recently read an article in
Popular Science Monthly
, written by the Dutch horticulturist Hugo de Vries, who had come all the way from Holland to visit the Luther Burbank gardens in California. “I’ll keep going to the library, yes. But I’d like to meet real experts and also cover the agricultural exhibit at the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland. There will be dozens of exhibits from around the world related to plants, new crops. We could fertilize two bulbs at one time, so to speak.”

CK munched on his cookie, a man in thought.

“I’ve had contact with one exhibitor already, and did you
know that the organizers pump water into a marsh to make it a lake to enhance the exposition site and—”

“You’re wrangling for a feature.”

She took a deep breath. “I think I’m ready. Some exhibitors support programs of more public gardens.” The
Bee
devoted many column lines to stories about the betterment of public life, favoring taxes to support it. “While I’m in Portland, I could also interview Thomas Jefferson Howell. He wrote
A Flora of Northwest America
.” The book had taken the botanist years to complete, and the illustrations were magnificent, but he was somewhat of a recluse. Cornelia was beginning to think most gardeners were—Luther Burbank’s flamboyant promotion of his efforts being an exception.

“That has possibilities. You’ve contacted an exhibitor? From California?”

“Not from California.”

Cornelia handed CK a business card. “Miss L. L. Hetzer,” CK read. “A woman?”

“Indeed.”

“Looks to be quite the artist, if she drew this sketch herself.”

Cornelia leaned over to look at the card with him, noting the fine ink drawing she guessed might be the garden the woman worked at back east.

“She’s a renowned instructor at the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture for Women. In Massachusetts. Apparently
all the women learn to draw and do surveying and so on, so they can design estate gardens or public parks.” Cornelia emphasized the public part.

“I don’t like to be an easy editor. Makes reporters lazy. But I like this idea. And you’re right; you’re ready for a feature piece. Maybe we can emphasize how good landscape architecture brings the country to the people, and that brings people to a city. How it’s a good expenditure of public money to maintain parks. The exposition appears to be on the road to making money by bringing people from back east and all.”

“That could be another aspect of my feature, the economics of the exposition—as well as gardens. An interview with a woman from an all-women landscape college would be quite unique. I have a few other ideas as well.”

“Yes, yes it would. All right, you have my blessing. And if you can get Howell to see you, make that happen too. And hopefully”—he shouted after her as she backed through the door—“you’ll get something for your Common Woman column. You can always add the recipe for these cookies.”

Back at her desk, Cornelia read the letter that had inspired her to suggest the trip to the exposition in Portland in the first place. She intended one of her features to emphasize the importance of nature in memorializing those we love, and what better place to do that than at a worldwide exposition featuring plants and trees?

“I have leggy lilacs planted by my mother in 1860,” the
letter began. “I lived apart from my mother for most of my life, and upon returning for her funeral three years ago, I made the decision to remain in her house. Her lilacs haunt me. The top of the foliage is over six feet high now, while the bottoms are bare as rooster legs. They bloom for only a few days in the spring, and some of the scent has faded. I seek a way to make them pretty, like they were when my mama was young and vibrant and alive. They need to be a memorial for her, and it saddens me to see them disappear the way she did, with faded blooms and the aroma of neglect.”

Aroma of neglect. The letter-writer’s words haunted Cornelia as she thought about her sickly mother. She never intended to neglect her, but only rarely thought of what her life was like when she’d been young and vibrant.

She donned her hat over straw-colored hair and grabbed her bag. She’d buy her ticket on the way home, make sure her sister looked after her mother. But first she’d pick up a celebratory bouquet of flowers at the stand outside the office to cheer them all.

H
ow would you like to go to the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland in June?” I asked Lizzie, Delia, and Martha. I knew Fritz would want to go. We were at the farm, working in the beds. I’d planted rows and rows of lilac starts, and they needed mulching and monitoring, even though they’d long passed their bloom. Nelia and Ruth carried buckets and dippers, walking along the aisles between the rows, pouring life-giving water onto the young roots. I’d acquired the help of a few boys I called my “bucket boys,” so I didn’t have to do so much heavy lifting. Some of the sprouts I’d pollinated had bloomed within two years, but most would take three to seven. The ones that bloomed were finished by Mother’s Day, and a June trip to the fair seemed like good timing, without the rush of pruning, marking foliage, or even harvesting the vegetable garden. Besides, I wanted to see the Japanese exhibit because of their reputation for unique iris
bulbs, and I heard that Chile was giving away monkey puzzle trees.

“What fun!” Delia said. “I hear there are interesting foods being offered there from places like the Philippines. Where is that, anyway?”

“In the South China Sea,” Martha told her. “More than three thousand islands in all.”

“I love having a sister who can answer questions like that off the top of her head.” Beneath her straw hat, Martha grinned at the compliment.

“Speak to your respective husbands about going.” I stretched my back. “Call it an anniversary present. We’ll take you all. Ride the steamer to Portland. I hear there’s a train or streetcar that will take us from downtown to within a block of the exposition.”

“Or take the train all the way,” Delia said.

“We’ll let the men decide.” I loved the banter the girls engaged in.

“Nell Irving’s been teased some by his friends because the fair is at Guild’s Lake.” Delia brushed at a bee. “But he tells them his name is pronounced
guild
like the skilled trade associations in the old country, and the lake in Portland is spoken like
guile
.”

“Is Nell Irving certain he’s not somehow related?” Lizzie asked her sister. “Maybe he has wealthy ancestors he didn’t know about.”

“If that’s so, we’re probably the only relatives without electricity.”

Electricity hadn’t arrived in Woodland yet, and I’d heard that the exposition featured a display of over a hundred thousand light bulbs that surrounded the exhibit buildings, making it like day when it was night, man’s efforts diminishing the glow of the stars. I couldn’t imagine starlight being drained by electric bulbs. I hoped our community never suffered such a bleaching of the night sky, though I’d be happy enough to have light bulbs illuminating my seed catalogs on a rainy winter night. The thought of how man transforms God’s creation brought Barney Reed to mind. We had our fair share of disagreements about man’s—or woman’s—role in changing creation at this week’s Bible classes.

“Oh, look at this!” I told the girls. “Look! Come here! It’s got five petals! Five!”

My daughters hovered around, staring at the bloom I held in my palm. “So it does,” Lizzie said. “Is it from one of the Lemoine?”

“Yes, oh yes. I can’t believe it. It’s better than the apple. Just look at that!” I inspected every single bloom on that bush but only found the one with five petals. I marked it, then moved to several others. “I’m just amazed. Five. If I can get five, then six, seven.” I turned to them, tears brimming. “Twelve petals
is
possible.”

They’d moved on, Lizzie looking at a dahlia, and the
other two chatting about what they’d wear. I felt separated, apart.

“Imagine that. Five petals,” I repeated as I approached them.

“You sound surprised, Mama.” Martha turned toward me. “It’s quite a feat.”

“I know I raved it could happen, but I didn’t really know. It’s all experimental, so nothing is certain.” I could hardly wait to tell Frank when he came back from the Bottoms where we still kept the cows. “I should write to Luther Burbank and tell him.”

I caught Lizzie rolling her eyes and corrected myself. “Oh, I’m just piddling around with that idea. Now, what will you girls wear?” I said, hoping to be invited back into their conversation.

“Will you please dress in something fashionable?” Lizzie pulled her garden gloves off. “I’ll even make it for you.” She grinned.

“Fine. But nothing requiring a tight belt or a too-big bustle. I like loose, and remember, I’m shaped like a pickle.”

We chatted about what we’d wear, what we’d take with us, how long we might be gone, and I kept my mind with them. After all, the fair had been my idea. But my thoughts kept slipping back to the five petals on the purple lilac and my wish that my daughters understood my enthusiasm for my success.

Fred worked for the steam company, having started there shortly after he and Lizzie married, so he’d have to arrange his schedule. Nell Irving needed someone to milk their cows for a couple of days, as would we. Bertha’s husband, Carl, would probably do it. We’d have to move the cows up to Martin’s Bluff before we left. The trip meant additional work, and I suspect that extra work was a reason we didn’t let ourselves do entertaining things much. It took so much energy to get to bliss.

Frank teased that our intimate moments were limited by the same philosophy. In Frank’s mind, whatever it took for hugs and kisses to be the result was well worth the effort. I believed that too, but practicality and fatigue often ruled my roost.

June 20 opened with the usual mist over the river. We congregated at five o’clock in the morning on the shoreline, ready to board the sternwheeler
Mascot
. We could come back to Woodland on the same day and arrive home in the dark, but we’d decided to spend at least three days at the exposition and would have two nights at a Portland hotel.

Once on board, Fred reveled in his passion—steamboats. He began explaining everything about the sternwheeler to us, providing intriguing details as though the boat were a character in a book. “One hundred thirty-two feet long. Beam is
twenty-four feet, and the depth of the hold is five feet five inches.” Fritz listened intently. Our son hadn’t shown much interest in steamboating, but he did love the river, loved to fish, loved to take a raft out and let it drift him like a leaf on a lazy stream, and never complained about the trek back upriver tugging his raft along the bank.